


But First, Do No Harm

by orphan_account



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Gency-centric if you squint, this is not a happy story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-01
Updated: 2017-02-01
Packaged: 2018-09-21 08:54:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9540539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: It was her duty as a medic to not do any harm to anyone she helped, so when her patient woke up hating the body she gave him, Mercy couldn't help but feel guilty.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Just a note: I still don't play Overwatch, so pardon me for any inaccuracies or OOC-ness :'D

When Mercy finished tying the last stitch on her patient into a full-knot, it was only then that she realised what she had done this time.

Lying on the operating table was a life contained under iron plates and artificial muscles, the product of advanced technology she herself developed at the cost of many tireless days and sleepless nights. As a surgeon, this was obviously not the first time she had operated on a patient whose only other option was death, but this was the first time she had done something so extensive and avant-garde that she stopped breathing for a moment just looking at the creation in front of her. Unbelievable as it was, it was her hands which infused life and knitted new beginnings into whatever was left of her patient’s old self and brought him back from the death’s door, and even though he barely looked like a human now, she felt a little relief that she could at least save the soul underneath.

She did well, or so she thought. She definitely meant well.

She stepped away from the operating table and signalled for the nurses to help her. Her assistants cleaned the mess up and wheeled the patient out of the theatre. Even though his body was still roped in a nest of cables that kept him alive, Mercy knew that soon enough, he would be free to be himself again. Not only that, she had designed his new body to be much more capable than a normal skin-and-bone human body would ever be; he would walk, he would run, he would fly, he would zip and zap and use the power she had bestowed him for good. He would be alive again. He would not be the same, but at least he was alive and well.

He was saved from harm.

Or so she had hoped.

 

* * *

 

The first rule of the oath she took when she was a young medic was ‘do no harm.’ When she thought of it now, Mercy could only smile bitterly at how naïve the oath was. Ideally, being a doctor meant being a selfless and helpful saviour that carried your fellow humans to safety whenever they needed you, but such idealistic views rarely ever became reality, and it was much less so in a world wrapped in war.

Even though Mercy was benevolent and caring, she tried to not meddle too much with her cyborg patient’s recovery. In hindsight, this was probably a mistake. Mercy kept her distance even when she heard that her patient struggled to accept his new body. She silently carried a pang of guilt and blame in her heart, and it was evident in her heavy steps, but she reined herself in, telling herself that body acceptance was not something that she could influence.

She couldn’t deny that she felt guilty for being the one who gave him this new body, one which was so problematic that every single muscle fibre he had protested against each other. She had hoped that time would heal him, but days passed and his struggle only grew. It was the way his fingers didn’t move the way they used to. It was the way the sweet scent of tea was different when smelled from under a visor. It was the way his human heart would pound against his iron ribcages awkwardly like a drumroll that was out of sync from the rest of the marching band. It was the way he woke up in the morning not knowing who he actually was and what he had become.

_Do no harm,_ she had whispered with her hand over her heart, back then as a young doctor, back then when she didn’t know better.

This time, she had failed her patient and herself both, and she didn’t know how to fix this. Brilliant as she was, she had no cure for an anguished heart.

There was just no amount of cellular therapy or nanobiology that could fix that.

 

* * *

 

Mercy wished that she could be surprised when she found out that her patient had gone missing, but she just closed her eyes and shook her head when she found out.

Some of her colleagues complained, saying that the rogue cyborg could pose harm to the others, especially with how strong he was.

Mercy thought, _they_ were the one who did him harm first.

Years passed before their paths somehow crossed again. It was when she saw him again that he had become whom she had hoped him to be, at ease and peace with the house his soul resided in.

When he told her that he was whole, she could feel the burden lift off her heart, and it was the cure that she herself couldn’t find.

 

* * *

 

Any advanced technology came with a drawback, and even though the effect might not be immediately visible, the devil was always lurking, ready to come out whenever it was ready to.

For Genji, it was when a well-placed arrow struck his human heart that it was apparent that he was, in fact, never invincible.

Mercy came to his rescue before his body even fully hit the ground, and as usual, she raised her staff and healed him. However, the next morning when he woke up, he felt a jolt like a short-circuit racking his ribcages, and he immediately knew that something was really, really wrong.

Mercy did a thorough check-up on his parts and her face fell when she saw the results. The cutting-edge technology she implanted into him had started to expire, and when a machine started failing, it meant that the days were already numbered. It was one thing to watch a dishwasher or washing machine slowly die, but it was a whole other thing to watch a human machine slowly wither.

She tried fixing him like she used to, but sometimes, some things were just irreparable. The more she patched him up, the more complications popped up. It was first itch-like jolts of electricity that made Genji roll his eyes underneath his visor. Then came the tremors, causing the plates of his armour to clink against each other. On some days, his vision spun, and his legs knotted over themselves, causing him to drop like a heap of scrap metals.

He hated it, but this time, he hated the situation, not his body.

Mercy’s weekly check-up soon turned into daily in an attempt to stem his downfall. It was when she found it hard to wake him up from his bed in the morning that she knew he might be gone any time soon.

He looked at her with glassy eyes when she removed his visor with trembling hands on one day when she couldn’t even get him to move at all.

When he finally whispered something, what he said was: _thank you, Mercy._

 

* * *

 

The day his soul left this earth for a better house elsewhere was the day he made her question the mantras she held dear for the second time.

She had always said about how heroes never died, and even though she realised that there was a price to that, the price was certainly never death.

She watched as they lit up candles around his coffin, her heart a little lighter from all the emptiness that it contained. The attendants placed flowers into the coffin before closing it down; a cyborg he might be, but there was a human underneath, and it was only proper and appropriate to give him a funeral worthy of humans.

She thought of the Mercy that stood in that operating theatres years ago with a scalpel in hand, the Mercy who was ready to make the first cut into the mangled body in front of her. People said the first cut was always deepest, but as Mercy watched the attendants carry his coffin away towards the funeral pyre, she was pretty sure that in her case, it was the last cut that was deepest.

As she walked out into the cold January air, she could feel the iciness of his armour as he lied on that operating table on her hands. She subconsciously laced her fingers together, relishing the little warmth they gave each other. Flames from the funeral pyre licked the air behind her, and as Mercy looked up to the white sky, she whispered gently, _I hope you’ll be watching over me._


End file.
